Freedom within Reason

by Susan R. Wolf

Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason , Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but
independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

Genres: Philosophy

162 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Susan R. Wolf (born 1952) is a moral philosopher and philosopher of action who is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Wolf earned a BA from Yale University in philosophy and mathematics and a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University with a dissertation directed by Thomas Nagel.

Before taking up her current position at North Carolina, Wolf taught at Harvard University, the University of Maryland, and the Johns Hopkins University.

Wolf was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999 and of the American Philosophical Society in 2006. She received a Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities in 2002.

Her husband, Douglas MacLean, is also a philosopher teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Wolf’s first book on free will and responsibility smartly captures the most essential elements of contemporary philosophical debate about freedom and puts forth a provocative new way to think about responsibility. Wolf takes on the likes of real-self theorists such as Harry Frankfurt and Gary Watson, hard determinists, and libertarians in an effort to offer a persuasive compatibilist account of freedom within reason, or what Wolf calls the Reason View. The outline of the book is quite simple: first, Wolf explains the dilemma of autonomy, then articulates two possible responses—the real-self view and the autonomy view—before she defends her own account, the Reason View. The Reason View, however, raises important metaphysical and meta-ethical questions, which Wolf treats in the final two chapters, respectively. She is both charitable and appropriately critical to the views she calls into question, and her defense of the Reason View is remarkably persuasive. Because I am most interested in connections between meta-ethics and the conditions of responsibility, I will examine, in detail, some of Wolf’s major claims in the final chapter of Freedom Within Reason.

The final chapter examines the meta-ethical assumptions of the Reason View toward responsibility. As per the Reason View, a creature is responsible if she possesses not only the ability to make her behavior conform to her deepest values, but also the ability to develop, evaluate, and modify those values based on her capacity to know and act in accordance with what Wolf calls the True and the Good. Of course, this second condition of the Reason View invites complicated meta-ethical questions about what constitutes the True and the Good, whether the True and the Good are relative to distinct cultures, and perhaps most importantly, whether a conceptualization of the True and the Good reflects a certain objectivity of values. Wolf’s main claim in the prelude to her section of varieties of antiobjectivism in the final chapter, “The True and the Good,” raises a concern about whether iterations of antiobjectivism threaten the validity of the Reason View. Even if the Reason View implies a commitment to the objectivity of value, she claims, it is compatible with two out of the three antiobjectivist positions that may arise when one tries to justify one’s own values, and finds that attempt unsatisfactory.

Wolf identifies three distinct antiobjectivist meta-ethical positions: what I call here the God’s-eye point of view position, nihilism, and conceptual subjectivism. She asserts that only one position—conceptual subjectivism—is strictly incompatible with the Reason View, and proceeds to outline the basic tenets of each antiobjectivist stance. The God’s-eye point of view position, adopted when one realizes that there is no ultimate, God’s-eye point of view independent of social norms from which values derive and can be objectively discerned, poses no real threat to the Reason View. While such reflection may lead one to accept the fact that there are no objective values “out there,” independent of humans, one can still stay committed to an anthropocentric form of objectivism, where some values really are better, or more rational, than others, at least for human persons in the world as it is. In this sense, the God’s-eye point of view position is not a robust form of antiobjectivism, and is therefore compatible with the Reason View.

Nihilism, on the other hand, does represent a concrete form of antiobjectivism. The nihilist rejects the objectivity of values on all fronts; while she believes some non-evaluative statements, such as empirical facts about the world, are truer than others, she is indifferent toward evaluative claims about values and sets of values. In this sense, the nihilist’s ability to know and act in accordance with the True and the Good becomes, simply, the ability to know the True; the nihilist still uses Reason to choose with reference to the facts about a certain situation. Of course, for the nihilist, it is a non-normative fact of the matter that there are no normative facts, and so the ability to appreciate this fact may be important to attributions of responsibility. If the nihilist concedes that her most cherished values are unjustifiable with reference to objective moral norms, and therefore lives an “authentic” life, then she is responsible for this decision, and perhaps—I will return to this point later—a candidate for praise. While nihilism considerably alters our traditional sense of what it means to be responsible, Wolf nevertheless claims that it is at least somewhat compatible with the Reason View.

The most difficult antiobjectivist stance to understand is conceptual subjectivism, which Wolf says is entirely incompatible with the Reason View. Unlike the nihilist, who does not dispute normative competence, the conceptual subjectivist claims that Reason plays no role in the assignment of values. In fact, Reason does not even support the nihilist’s conclusion that there are no objective values; the conceptual subjectivist not only refuses to defend one evaluative claim over another, but also the assertion that evaluative claims are never justified. Whereas the nihilist would say that to cheat on one’s test is neither right nor wrong, the conceptual subjectivist would add that that statement is no more justified than any other about whether it is morally permissible to cheat on one’s test. Conceptual subjectivism makes our traditional concept of responsibility, or any concept of responsibility for that matter, incoherent, and therefore stands at odds with the Reason View. Wolf even says that if one believes in responsibility and that the Reason View’s account of it is correct, then one must be committed to the claim that conceptual subjectivism is false.

I contend that in addition to conceptual subjectivism, nihilism as described by Wolf is also incompatible with the Reason View because it makes our traditional notion of responsibility incoherent. While nihilism ostensibly preserves responsibility insofar as the nihilist can be responsible for an “authentic” existence, this responsibility cannot carry with it our familiar concepts of praise and blame, for nihilism precludes the evaluative assessments that make praise and blame possible in the first place. In fact, the true nihilist would also refuse to connect responsibility in this thin, non-normative sense, to praise and blame. Wolf is sensitive to this objection but still maintains that nihilism is not strictly incompatible with the Reason View. To be sure, the fact that the nihilist does not dispute normative competence makes her position less of a threat to the Reason View than conceptual subjectivism; nevertheless, it distorts what it means to be responsible to such an extent that responsibility looks entirely different than the Reason View’s account of it. It may be the case that Wolf is reluctant to admit the incompatibility of nihilism with the Reason View because she fails to separate responsibility from conditions for blameworthiness or praiseworthiness. Ostensibly, however, the Reason View supports the idea of praise and blame, and any meta-ethical stance that upends this notion seems completely incompatible with the Reason View.

[Nicolas Martorell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para quien tenga ganas de un poco de objetivismo moral

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book one star and therefore the author shouldn't be held responsible for it.